The Agriculture Department’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) is making increasing use of satellites that have long been used to monitor crop conditions to obtain evidence against farmers involved in crop insurance fraud.  Michael Hand, the RMA’s deputy administrator for compliance reports that fewer than 100 cases have been prosecuted using satellite imaging since the RMA began using the technology to combat fraud in 2001 but notes that data analysis combined with satellite imagining has resulted in 1,500 farms being placed on a watch list for possible crop fraud each year.

February 1, 2006